Join a Panel

Below you will find a list of proposed panels looking for participants. Please email the designated contact to join a panel. All panel participants need to submit an abstract for the conference. More information on panel and abstract submission is to be found here. If you want to organize a panel but have not yet found enough participants, please contact us via email so we can share your proposal via this website, linkedin and facebook.

Panel and abstract proposals are due January 5, 2016. Submission deadline extended to January 17, 2016.

Convergences and disparities of the open society and the open city in a historic perspective

On one side, the ‘open society’ is one of the foundations of democracy laid out on a theoretical basis since the 18th century, although it has taken different forms and modes. On the other, the notion of the ‘open city’ has a complex history and has been used in many ways. The link with the idea of the open society is rather loose as the open city has its own long, political and military history. This panel wants to look at the convergences and disparities between both notions in a historical perspective on urban design and policy, urbanism and infrastructure since the Enlightenment. More in detail, proposals for contributions should choose among the following questions of the open city:

1. The development of an urban space, accessible for everybody and without hinders and obstacles: the open city as part and driving force of a generalized free movement;

2. The restructuring of the city from a closed organism into a machine of specialised and exchangeable places, buildings and activities;

3. The open society, based on a ‘social contract’, a ‘public domain’ and on human and equal rights: its effects and consequences on the city in terms of public amenities and infastructure;

Evaluating the Neighborhood as a Scale for Planning

This panel will examine what role the neighborhood has played as a scale of planning, from the Progressive era neighborhood parks, to the Neighborhood Unit in the 1920s to Historic Districts and Neighborhood Improvement Districts in the 1970s and beyond. To what extent have theories about the neighborhood as a planning unit continued despite changes in planning policies and paradigms? How did the role of the neighborhood change in response to the growing predominance of bottom up, small-scaled planning projects under the Model Cities program and policies such as the Community Development Act of 1974? What are some of the strengths and weaknesses of planning at the neighborhood scale, versus at the city or regional scale?

How to make original post-war ‘Grand Ensembles’ resilient to the changes of the modern city?

In the framework of the upcoming IPHS conference, Dr. Nune Chilingaryan would like to propose a panel discussion on the position of big residential complexes (the so-called “grand ensembles” in French) in the modern city structure. These complexes have typically been realized in the post-war period between 1960-1970. Despite being interesting residential complexes, some of them are highly undervalued and often doomed to disappear. This is due to political, social and aesthetical changes resulting in active renovation processes in many European cities. How to make these original urban forms resilient to the changing modern city, without denying their authentic concept?

This panel discussion would preferably be held in French. Would you like to participate in this panel? Please send an email to info@iphs2016.org.

Mrs. Nune Chilingaryan is a Doctor of Architecture and Associate professor at the Lyon National High School of Architecture.

Inaugural and Valedictory Speeches: Connecting Practice and Education

Charlotte van Wijk and her team are looking for panel participants who are examining the connection between education and practice as evidenced through inaugural lectures, valedictory lectures or other key speeches. Such lectures are regularly held in some cultures and institutions and provide revealing insights into architectural and planning cultures. We wish to analyse them to shine light on intersections between design work and education.
Papers should sketch the educational/professional context in the country in which the speeches were held as a framework for a closer investigation of the Professors’ provenance, education and knowledge and the educational system they worked in. Contributions can ask: What programme did the Professor propose, and how did it fit in with the general politics of the institution? What was the Professor’s impact on the field? How was the Professor’s educational approach received and disseminated?

Large-scale green spaces: history and resilience

This session aims to discuss the changing meanings, physical forms and functions of large-scale green spaces in history towards more resilient urban futures. The emergence of modern town planning coincided with the definition of park system plans in the USA and Europe. In this context, numerous typologies of large-scale green space were put forward, such as greenbelts, the green heart, green wedges, parkways, large urban parks, among others. Today, these spaces are considered to be fundamental in providing integrated ecosystem services, sustainable city-region strategies and resilience to climate change. Key questions that this panel wishes to discuss are:

How have the concepts of large-scale green spaces emerged in planning discourses? How have their meanings and functions changed over time? What have been the implications of these changes for their physical form? How can large-scale green spaces contribute to the promotion of sustainable city-regions and their resilience in face of climate change?

If you would like to join this panel, please contact Dr Fabiano Lemes de Oliveira, Senior Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth: fabiano.lemes@port.ac.uk.

Over centuries, men has shaped nature to create both cultural landscapes and urban landscapes. In both cases, planning (or conscious intervention) has played an important role. This session asks: How have large-scale planned landscapes emerged? Who are the actors and their tools? It also explores how these planned landscapes can be preserved, interpreted and made accessible and understandable for the larger public.
Examples could be:
· Europe on the Ganges (India)
· Colonies of Benevolence (NL and B) (to be discussed by Paul Meurs)
· São Francisco river (BR),
· Historic cities in their natural setting, like Rio de Janeiro, Recife and Salvador (BR); Saint Petersburg (RU) etc.
· Railways landscapes around the world
· Mining landscapes, like Amapá BR: Serro de Navio / Vila Amazonas

Micro-level resilience to water scarcity and overabundance in urban neighborhoods (since the early modern period)

Answers and overall solutions found by municipalities and local governments for managing water scarcity or, inversely, overabundance (e.g. during floods or land drainage projects) have been the subject of numerous academic studies for large metropolises worldwide, for many historical periods. Therefore, most of the studies dealing with these “water tensions” in cities cover a large spatial scale, commonly related to the development and implementation of large water supply pipe networks, peri-urban wetland drainage projects or canalization of urban rivers for flood prevention and sanitary purposes.

In contrast, very few analyses exist about answers and resilience of urban communities at a micro-level such as a peri-urban settlement/village, a neighborhood or a household (with bottom-up approaches). For example, are there differences in responses to drought periods or flood events between people from neighborhoods hosting specific water-related guilds (tanners or dyers) or even between urban areas with water-centered life-support systems like irrigated farming and those that do not? Why do some cope with this kind of challenges more easily and better than others? How do households and neighborhoods adapt their practices and built surroundings to fluctuations in water availability? What are the consequences in terms of both risk control strategies and sustainable water resource management but also impacts on urban planning and the use of public space? Do neighborhoods in regions such as the Mediterranean basin, experiencing recurring droughts, exhibit a greater resilience? Is the adaptation of their communities easier than those from less drought stressed areas as in northern countries, or do they have as much trouble to cope with water shortages? And, if not, why?

This panel aims to explore the resilience and adaptation of both urban and peri-urban communities to local water scarcity and overabundance at a micro-level in connection with urban planning processes, from a historical perspective (early modern and modern period). Proposed papers can address the social and economic dimensions in people’s and communities’ answers to varying water availability (e.g. the shift from one local economic/farming system to another in order to counteract drought effects, new innovative and interactive/collaborative approaches to water use, integrated water and river policy, etc.) as well as adopted original technical solutions such as new potable water distribution systems. In this context, the role of spatial mapping (mapping of local available water resources) together with urban cartography as means of environmental knowledge and strategies of adaptation by contemporaries could also be investigated.

Even though proposals focusing on single-case studies will be considered, submissions addressing comparative approaches that can help shed new light on these issues are especially welcome, without geographical limitation. An additional aim of this panel is to lay the production for a co-authored article about this topic. If you are interested in contributing to this proposed panel (3-5 speakers), please contact promptly Nicolas MAUGHAN (Aix-Marseille University, France) and Ellen JANSSENS (University of Antwerp, Belgium) before next December 31, 2015. Final abstracts (abstracts of about 500 words) are due January 5, 2016. E-mails addresses: nicolas.maughan@gmail.com; ellen.janssens@uantwerpen.be.

Peak Oil, Climate Change and the Resiliance of Urban Form – Comparing the History of Urban Development in European with that of North America

The US housing crisis 2007 has highlighted the structural crisis of the American urban form: the ‘fiasco of suburbia’ (J.H. Kunstler) in terms of the spatial arrangement of uses with its implications for urban transport and the use of fossil energy. Looking at the north-American urban setting from an European point of view some basic aspects stick out: the difference in the history of urban development, the difference in the use of resources for mobility and the difference in ‘urban culture’ in general. I have been pursuing these aspects by comparing the development history of the cities of Los Angeles and Munich.

Perspectives on Industry-led Urban Planning and Development

Industrial development and the exploitation of resources and cheap labor in the Global South do not come together with positive side effects at the spatial level. Environmental damage, housing shortage, poor sanitation, physical segregation, among others, have become the common offspring of rapid modernization. On top of that, the recent vogue for re-shoring of industries and the shifting offshoring trends is leading to what has been called ‘premature deindustrialization’: not having enough time to grasp the benefits of industrialization for relieving their pressing needs for housing or for the improvement of their social and physical infrastructure, nations end up locked in a wicked poverty trap.

This session, framed within a curatorial project being developed at the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal, aims at discussing—either in the form of a panel or a round table—industry-sponsored planning and design, and, in particular, the problematics around the legacy of the actions of transnational corporations in the local built environments. The session welcomes contributions dealing with, but not limited to, the critical study of historical precedents of industrial urbanism and company towns, private new towns, the urbanism of Especial Economic Zones in industrializing nations, resource extraction urbanism, Chinese investment in infrastructure and city making in contemporary Africa, the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility in workers’ communities and urban environments, or current trends in city and regional planning linked to the localization and re-shoring of industry in Europe and North America.

In case you want to join this panel, please contact info@iphs2016.org and mention this panel.

Can we study planning history without having a real relationship with or a practice in actual space? Historic studies have been utilized in not only planning studies but also in developing the idea and actual methodology of local community movements and institutional projects. This session is going to discuss how the planning history contributes to the practical and theoretical planning study by referring to actual cases, such as designing master plans and organizing local consensuses of recovery planning based on historical knowledges. Panelists are going to examine multiple issues of the planning theory and methodology by focusing to the meaning of the idea of history integrated with practical activities.

This session is looking for additional participants, and is expecting to expand the study of planning history with diverse socio-cultural contexts and case studies.

Planning Ideas in Latin America

We invite papers that explore the change and exchange of planning ideas among Latin American countries in the 20th and 21st century and /or discuss planning approaches in the continent, and their effectiveness to and flexibility towards challenges posed by social, economic and environmental sustainability.

We are specifically interested in questions such as:

Whether and how have Latin American planning systems been evolving to confront the new challenges of sustainability and resilience?
Which specific planning approaches can be identified in the countries of the LAC region, and how can they be characterized in terms of the answers to the traditional challenges of rapid urban growth and socio-spatial segregation?
How and why have national and local governments adopted good practices/innovations from other countries of the region of the Global South?
What is and has been the influence of international development agencies such as the World Bank, IADB and UN-Habitat in the diffusion and adoption of planning policies based on successful Latin American or Global South experiences?

This panel is organised by the Department of Urbanism of Delft University of Technology and NALACS, the Netherlands Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Abstracts are due January 5. If you are interested to contribute to this panel, please check the conference website, iphs2016.org, or email: info@iphs2016.org, mentioning this panel.